Have you ever sat at a classical concert and wondered what the conductor’s face was doing? With backs to the audience, conductors tend to let only the orchestra be privy to their expressions. But Ton Koopman might make you wonder what you’ve been missing.

A renowned baroque music master, Netherlands native Koopman turned the tables — or rather the harpsichord — on an Ordway center audience on Friday morning. He acted as one of two soloists on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Concerto in F for Two Harpsichords, and also conducted the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with his back to them. What fun it was to see him covering his mouth to cue quiet or holding his hands over his heart and seemingly swooning to request romantic melancholy.

Koopman might be a bit of a showboat for some tastes, but I found his effervescent joy in music-making to be ideal for the 18th-century repertoire on this weekend’s concerts. What could have been dry and cerebral was instead a spirited celebration of the sound coming forth from Germany as the baroque era gave way to the classical.

In C.P.E. Bach’s music, you can hear much of what he learned from his father, J.S. Bach. Yet he has a voice all his own, one that clearly influenced Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Two of his classical-era sinfonias were given interpretations that hummed with energy. They were sandwiched around the decidedly more baroque double harpsichord concerto, which found both Koopman and Tini Mathot in fine form as they exchanged and layered phrases, her instrument painting in duskier shades than his.

The concert’s second half went further back in time with a sinfonia from a J.S. Bach cantata and a thoroughly enjoyable piece of “Tafelmusik” by Georg Philipp Telemann. The latter work featured all sorts of engaging interplay within the orchestra, feeling like lively conversation at a really enjoyable dinner party. Appropriate, considering that Telemann wrote the work for just such a setting.

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